Personal Branding Archives | Page 3 of 6

How To Decide If You Should Launch Your Product

By Cindy Ratzlaff August 20, 2012

I once had a boss who asked me why we published so many books that were not bestsellers. He wanted to know why we didn’t just publish the bestselling ones and reject the rest. It was a naive question, but one that crops up in every industry. Why don’t we all just launch the profitable ideas and not the mistakes? Shouldn’t there be a way to determine if a product or service or book will succeed before we invest time, money and resources in launching?

There isn’t a truly foolproof solution or we’d all be rich, no book would go unread, every product would have thousands of raving fans and marketing would be pointless. But there are questions that publishers and Fortune 500 companies alike ask themselves before they invest in materials, resources, marketing and everything else that goes into bringing a product or service from the idea stage to the marketplace. And, entrepreneurs need to ask themselves those same questions before they launch because their time, money and resources are their primary investment start up tools.

4 Great Marketing Ideas Your Business Can Use Now

By Cindy Ratzlaff July 31, 2012

Every day thousands of fantastic articles and marketing ideas for entrepreneurs and small business owners come streaming onto the web, and throughout social media. What’s a busy entrepreneur to do. You can’t read everything. You can email yourself great links to articles you want to read later or save the links to a private circle on G+ or even bookmark them for handy reference. I use the G+ strategy most of the time and add sites that regularly deliver to my Google Reader account.

For those who haven’t yet figured out how to scan the headlines and save the best for later, here are a few ideas are so creative and useful that I want to make sure you don’t miss them. I’ve added short introductory paragraph to tell you why they’re worth your time to click through and read and possibly save. But all of these have ideas that you can use, right now, to amp up the action on your marketing.

Personal Branding Tips | How to Start Even Before You Have A Business Idea

By Cindy Ratzlaff July 9, 2012

I received an email from someone recently asking me for ideas on how they can begin developing their personal branding even though they don’t yet have a business plan or a fully imagined business idea. I was impress they were thinking about branding at this stage of their business development and the question got me thinking about how we can all set up foundational brand elements now that will serve us as we grow an idea into a business.

But how can we brand something that doesn’t exists, you ask? We can’t. But I believe that you are always the brand. So you can and should begin to articulate what the brand of “you” includes.

How to Customize App Images | New Facebook Pages Timeline

By Cindy Ratzlaff March 9, 2012

2015 UPDATE: Since the writing of this blog post there have been several updates to the Facebook page design. The tab app “boxes” are now located on the left hand side of your page and not displayed underneath the cover photo. All the other instructions, below, are still valid and creating a custom image for your Apps is very easy to do. Any questions about this or other social media marketing strategies can be directed to me on Facebook at https://cindyratzlaff.com/BrandNewBrandYou.

Now that the default landing tab is gone and all tabs are now “views and apps” according to Facebook, brands have an opportunity to customize the image that invites a fan to engage with a custom app.

Custom images for Apps Are the New Advertising on Facebook Fan Pages

There are four boxes “above the fold” on the new Facebook Fan Page Timeline. The first position is occupied by the Photos app. This box position is permanent and cannot be moved to another position. The next three boxes to the right of photos can be moved, customized and featured at will, IF you created the app (or former tab). If it is one of the suite of apps created by Facebook, you cannot change the image. If the app was created by a third party, the option to change the image is controlled by the third party app and you should check with them. But if you created the app, you can change the image.

Step-by-step guide to customizing the app image on your Facebook Fan Page wall.

Make sure you have enabled the preview of Timeline on your Facebook page by clicking the blue “preview” you will see at the top of every fan page that has not yet migrated to Timeline.
Click the down arrow at the right hand side of the currently visible apps just underneath your page name and cover photo space to reveal all of your former tabs, now referred to as “views and apps” in Facebook language.
Select the app you would like to customize and mouse over the upper right hand corner to reveal a pencil. Click the pencil to reveal a drop down menu.
Go all the way to the bottom of the drop down menu and click on “edit settings.”
You’ll now see a box that allows you to name the app and a link to change the custom image. After keying in the new name of your app, click on the “Change” link.
You’ll be taken to a page where you can upload a custom image. Click on the “Change” link on this page.
The familiar “Browse” option will pop onto the screen allowing you to upload an image from your desktop. Facebook recommends 111 px wide by 74 px high and will resize and convert images that are larger. I’ve had great luck with 280 x 180 sized images. Select the desired image from your computer and upload. There is no save button. Don’t waste time looking for it. Now go back to your page and look at the box image. The customized image is in place.

That’s all there is to it. You can change these images whenever you like and you can feature a new set of custom apps “above the fold” on Facebook Fan Pages whenever you like.

You can post a link directly to your custom app in your timeline and pin it to the top of your page for seven days to give it extra importance. I’ve created some simple custom designs for apps here to show you what’s possible. I’d love to see yours, too, so feel free to post a link to your custom apps below so we can inspire one another.

Facebook Fan Page Changes | How to Highlight Your Custom Tabs

By Cindy Ratzlaff March 3, 2012

UPDATE: New Facebook page designs cause a great deal of anxiety for business page owners as we get used to the new look and functionality of our pages. I wrote this update for people during the 2012 redesign. Stay tuned because a new design is rolling out in September 2015.

By now everyone is going through the 5 stages of grief over the loss of default landing tabs as the fact that all Facebook fan pages will convert to the new Facebook Timeline for Pages Design on March 30, 2012 sinks in.

Questions about the content housed on the millions of custom tabs created by businesses and entrepreneurs such as contests, opt-in offers, streaming video channels and e-commerce pages have people scrambling and questioning whether or not Facebook fans pages will be a worthwhile investment for small to mid-sized businesses and entrepreneurs, in both time and money.

All of your custom tabs still exist. You just need to think creatively about how to market them.

As of this writing, all of the content on custom tabs is still live and accessible. The only change has been that you cannot set up a default landing tab for non-fans. So how does a page entice fans to search for and click on a tab now that they are no longer displayed on the left hand side of a page?

Page admins can upload a custom image to represent the tab or app as Facebook is now referring to all tabs. Imagine seeing a series of evocative, engaging images in this 180 x 180 pixel format under the cover photo. Color, words, and images will call out to the reader like carnival barkers. “Come see the amazing offer.”

Page admins can also rearrange the order in which the apps appear. Four apps are “above the fold” and the rest live under the drop down arrow on the right hand side. Three of those app spots are available to admins to highlight the apps of their choice. Photos will always display. So admins can change the view to highlight specials, sales, contests or whichever three apps are most important to a page in any given time period.

I created two simple word images just to illustrate what’s possible. It was easy to upload the new app cover images and I expect to see brands and entrepreneurs doing some very creative work with these images. If you have examples of fun, enticing or downright awesome images fan pages are using to highlight their custom tab offerings, please post their URL below. Let’s amass some examples to inspire one another.

What Changes?

The Facebook Post Scheduling Tool